‘Zoe – time to become a woman!’

‘Nooooo!’

I was sprinting as fast as my ruby slippers could carry me, but my hideous cloaked pursuer was catching up, cackling sinisterly and brandishing – what the hell was that? – a gigantic condom!

Prissy as it sounds now, johnnies gave me the creeps (I nearly wrote ‘the willies’ then, but thought better of it).  Whether it was the sexy danger they implied, or because I disliked the touch of them, I wasn’t sure. 

I’d touched one once, you see, during a sex education talk.  The school nurse, blushingly assuring us the thing had not been used, passed one round the class.  Amid a good deal of giggling, we squeamishly chucked the unfortunate Durex to one another.  I gingerly handled it between two fingers, wincing at the slippy, latexy feel.

And now a monster one was threatening to net me.

Down the yellow brick road I tore, shrieking, dodging the witches and munchkins whose horrible faces leered out of the dark at me like ghost train characters at Alton Towers.

‘Just a little prick,’ my pursuer was cackling.  Little?  His condom billowed and inflated, like a grotesque windsock.  It would be a lucky man who could fill that.  ‘Oh, Zoe – little Zoe – today’s the day when your cherry goes POP!’

But, thankfully, it was only my eyes that popped – open.

Another day, another nightmare.  They were increasingly inventive nightmares too. 

Today’s was inspired by The Wizard of Oz, a supposedly delightful fairytale that actually traumatised me as a child and whose garish Christmas reruns I still have to switch off.

In yesterday’s, I had fallen pregnant with a fluffy-eyebrowed, mini-accountant, been promptly spurned by Ben, disowned by my parents and left to slurp gruel in a hostel for gymslip mothers.

It was the first day of that traditional spring doss known as the Easter holidays.  So why was I lying there sweating and queasy because of the act I was to perform that afternoon?  Why all this prudey silliness?  Sex wasn’t so frightening – was it? 

In contrast to the ‘not until you’re married’ ethos of Mom’s generation, Capewell girls were labelled ugly freaks if they didn’t Do It the minute they attained the age of consent.  Thirty years ago, I might have been called Easy for what I was about to do, but now it seemed de rigueur to acquire a dozen lovers before you were twenty.

Sex was everywhere.  Tina Skidmarks – if she could be believed – spent her teenage years wearing pants only to warm her ankles, and I calculated that even my parents must have Done It at least once. 

Mom, though, was sufficiently old-fashioned to believe one’s virginity was a sacred gift to be bestowed within the confines of a stable partnership – a marriage, if at all possible.  Thus was the disparity between our generations.  To us, it was not a gift but a curse, to be dumped upon the first taker.

Like most 90s girls, I had no intention of remaining chaste right up to my wedding night – and, because I was convinced Ben and I were committed for life, I did not consider myself easy in any case.  He was the only chap I would ever sleep with; the only one who would probably ever offer.  As far as I was concerned, I was merely acquiring carnal knowledge of my future husband.  Surely it was no sin to do this in advance of the honeymoon?

My classmates discussed sex constantly, though I think the majority were all talk.  One or two girls were on the Pill, and would ostentatiously swallow these daily tablets with their lunchtime cola to flaunt their sexually active status.  I actually envied their sense and boldness; I hadn’t dared approach old Dr Dunn myself.  I was hilariously naïve.  I had never phoned for a doctor’s appointment in my life and, being under eighteen, had no idea if I even could without parental assent. 

I had visions of the quack phoning Mom to enquire: ‘Mrs Taylor, I have your daughter with me.  She’s planning an imminent shag, with her cradle-snatching boyfriend whom you detest – do I have your permission to prescribe her contraception?’

So that was no good.  For most of my contemporaries, condoms were the contraceptive of choice anyway – though I’d have sooner died than march into Boots and study the perplexing packets on their counter.

I’d just have to rely on Ben to ‘go equipped.’  Which, to be fair, I was positive he would.  Whatever else he might be, he wasn’t an irresponsible type.  And johnny machines were omnipresent nowadays.

It was a surreal morning, that April Monday, the day of my First Time.  Mom brought me a cup of tea in bed as usual before scooting off to work (she was still an Argos vendeuse).

‘I’m off now, love.  Back around half-five-ish.’

I felt a rush of love towards her at the thought that come half-five-ish, her dear only child would no longer be a child.  I impulsively hugged her goodbye, savouring her reassuring, soapy aroma.  I half longed to confess all, hating this new secrecy between us that I guessed went with being an adult – but figured Mom would probably lock me in the house were she acquainted with my plans for the day.  I knew she’d be disappointed in me for giving myself so obligingly to the detested Ben.

‘That’s a nice surprise,’ she chuckled, ‘you’re normally ever so mardy in the mornings!’

‘Er, Mom, I don’t know if I’ll actually be here when you get home.  Angela – I mean, Andrea – ’ (he’d got me at it now!) ‘has asked me to go to Merry Hill with her.  We’ll probably meet up with Janine when she’s finished her shift at Druckers, catch up on all the gossip.’

‘That’ll be nice for you.  You haven’t seen Janine for a while – remember me to her, won’t you?’

I nodded, speech impossible.  I was completely choked: both because I’d deceived Mom so easily and because she was right – I hadn’t seen Janine in ages.  Or Claudette.  It was months since we’d chatted; aeons since we’d frothed and jabbered in the school playground like flirty ninnies.

I’d not been the most fantastic friend to Andie of late either, though I still saw her each day.  We’d seldom socialised outside school since my weekends had become homework- or Ben-orientated.  He despised Andie from the little he’d seen of her, and refused to meet my other friends. 

‘I have no interest in dizzy little girls,’ he sneered.

For his part, he didn’t want me socialising with his mates either (if he had any that is, for the only one I met was the sullen Adam, whom he portrayed as a runty little acolyte perpetually jealous of the great Ben).  Friends and family had no place in our private little bubble.  It had to be Ben and me against the world. 

I wished I was meeting Janine – and not because of the free lunch I knew she would sneak my way.  I wanted to be silly again; to snigger and moan about nothing.  I was loath to admit it, but even when we used to slouch around bemoaning our lack of boyfriends, I was happier in myself than I’d been since entering this suffocating union with Ben. 

Then I chided myself for being ungrateful and disloyal – something I’d found myself doing quite a lot since meeting Ben and picking up his ‘I can get any woman I want, but in the meantime I’m doing you a favour by dragging along with you’ vibes.

There was a distinct hooker-ish look about me as I lounged against the bus shelter on the corner of Andrew Street at lunchtime.  I was by now in my Seduction Outfit, an ensemble of yet more new garments: a, by my standards, pornographically short denim skirt and a little black blouse that afforded anyone who desired it an unhindered view of my bra. 

It wasn’t me, and I knew it.  It was ammunition.  Dating was war, and I had to win Ben.  If he wanted sex, then a sex siren I must become.  My voluptuous rival, Mandy Johnson, favoured ‘very provocative clothing,’ and no doubt filled it more than adequately, so nothing less would do for me. 

I’d felt naked and furtive as I sloped out of the house, pulling my denim jacket self-consciously across my unprotected chest and heaving a handbag in which was stuffed a rolled-up pair of jeans for my return journey.  Mom, and possibly Dad (depending on how long my deflowering took), would be home by the time I returned – and with one look at that skirt, they’d twig that someone other than Andrea Frost had been my companion for the day.

On my way to the bus stop, I was wolfwhistled for the first time ever.  Such a cliché, but my audience was a mob of builders, leering over their scaffolding.  I was so unused to this that I automatically swivelled round to see which babe had caught their attention.  When I saw nobody but me, I scuttled away, mortified, hating this interest I was suddenly inviting.

I hated those clothes!  I wore the skirt a few subsequent times, on holidays, but that horrid blouse would never adorn my back again.  Nowadays, when tempted to tut mumsily as teenagers strut by in tarty rags, I recall how I must have looked that day.  Yet I was no tart, just a vulnerable girl, begging to be loved and dressing in her idea of man-pleasing clothing.

Typically, when I wanted to be discreet and unseen, two people I knew well chose that moment to saunter by – in this case none other than Karl and Stef Corbett.  I stared at my boots and pressed myself against the metal shelter as though I hoped I would melt into it.

Please don’t see me, please don’t see me…but they did, of course.

I hardly fraternised with Karl these days, and hadn’t seen Stefan for ages (he was twenty now, and at uni); normally I’d loved to have conversed with them.  But not like this.  Not in these circumstances!

Ben’s influence was ever present.  He hated me talking to blokes, so I merely nodded and muttered a frigid ‘Hiya’ in response to Karl’s typically sunny ‘All right, Zo’ – as if Ben could somehow see me and would materialise from the ether screaming if I dared be friendly.

(He’d definitely have screamed were he aware of the unexpected kick I got from Karl seeing my bare, slimmed-down legs.)

‘That’s never little Zoe!’ I heard Stefan exclaim when the boys clearly thought they were outside earshot.

‘Yeah,’ Karl replied, sounding bemused too, ‘looks different, doesn’t she?’

‘Not half!’

I was sure I caught Karl pivot round for a crafty gape – then chastised myself for wishful thinking.  Then chastised myself again for describing such thinking as wishful. You have Ben now, I admonished, Karl is a mere friend, a classmate.
 
On the Walsall-bound bus, I drew more unwanted leers from gum-chomping lads and disgusted glares from the cackles of trolley-plying pensioners.  Some had infant grandkids, the sight of whom evoked poignant memories of those Saturday bus quests with my own granny.

It evoked guilt too.  Granny Danks hadn’t been well lately, so Mom said, and I really ought to go and see her this week.  I thought with a pang of the choice words she’d no doubt have about my current appearance.

It was a huge relief and convenience that a bus stop was located in the little grove of maisonettes where Ben resided.  At least I wouldn’t have to walk far.  It was perilous enough scuttling through my home town dressed like a pro waiting for a pick-up, let alone through the unfamiliar streets of Walsall.

Ben must have waited and watched me dismount the bus, for I found myself pulled through the door and up the stairs to his first-floor flat before the doorbell had even ceased to echo.

Now that I’m a fully grown homeowner sad enough to have opinions about soft furnishings, I take an at times nosy interest in friends’ décor.  But at that apathetic age, I registered nothing about Ben’s abode – save for his duvet, which I recall was patterned in that geometric red and grey that was all the vogue in the 80s.

 ‘You look fantastic, sweetheart,’ he sighed between kisses.  ‘Are those new clothes?’  Slurp, slurp.  ‘I’ve been waiting a long time for this.’  Frenchie, frenchie.  ‘You don’t know how I’ve longed for you.’

Oh, I think I did.

He broke off from the snog long enough to take my jacket and, to his credit, hang it tidily on the back of his bedroom door.  Then he lay back on the bed and eased me down on top of him. 

This was foreplay, Ben style.  No messing.  No ‘How are you?  Can I get you a cup of tea before I take your virginity?’  He got straight to the point, so to speak.

Not that it wasn’t nice to have my back so sensuously stroked, or – when he rolled me underneath him – my skin kissed with ten times the urgency he’d demonstrated outside the cinema a few days earlier, when he’d contradicted his first-date declaration that heavy petting in cars was ‘a bit seedy.’

Ben was an adroit, tender lover.  Here on the first floor, protected from passing voyeurs, I had no reason to draw back or slap away probing hands.  But I was still tense, and felt about as gracefully seductive as a pregnant donkey.

The vulgar sight of my little black boots waving in the air while my legs were wrapped around him might have turned on a foot fetishist, but to me just added to the overall ungainliness of the scene.  I was glad of the excuse to remove them, which came when he asked: ‘Would you like to take things a stage further?’

Did I have a choice?  I nodded dumbly.  In fact, I don’t know if I’d even spoken yet.  It was absurdly comical.

That was his cue to magic a johnny packet as if from nowhere and for us both to shed clothes and clamber beneath covers. 

‘Oh, Zoe, your body is so nice!’

‘So’s yours,’ I twittered automatically.  And actually it was.  So why did I go all taut and nauseous as he heaved it on top of me?

This is it, Zo – you’re actually going to doooo it!  For God’s sake, loosen those muscles!  You must not let Ben down now.

I clenched my teeth and my eyes shut – and imagined I was doing it with Lee Sharpe.

And promptly seized up.  It was an instinctive reaction; the medical term for it, I have since discovered, is vaginismus.  Ben speared me once, with something that felt as hard and sharp as a potato peeler, and I literally ‘shut myself down.’  I experienced an identical sensation three years later, when I underwent my first smear test.

Sorry Lee, you’re just not having the desired effect!

I squeezed my eyes even tighter and a reel of movie and boy band idols flashed past like one of those toy cameras where you flick through images of the Tower of London and Buckingham Palace.

But still nothing happened!

‘Come on baby,’ Ben grunted impatiently, ‘let me in!’

There was only one thing for it!

But it was disloyal; adulterous.  Famous heart-throbs were one thing, but a real-life boy; a boy I’d seen at a bus stop that very morning, was another matter.

Dare I think of him?

‘Let me in!  Can’t you see I’m dying for you!’

Oh sod it, I’d just have to recite three million Hail Marys – or whatever it was that non-Catholics sinners did for penance – I pictured Karl writhing on top of me.  Ooh, that was better!

Ben’s gratified grunt as he magically broke through was drowned out by me screaming as though being mutilated.  The slashing pain was excruciating, and when watery blood seeped out, staining his white sheets, I wanted to retch.  I hadn’t actually expected to bleed, always having imagined such a phenomenon occurred only in grandmotherly folklore. 

My First Time was an altogether sore experience.  After it, I scampered unglamorously to Ben’s bathroom to vomit away all the tension and pain. 

My face in his shaving mirror was so hangdog and bloodless I wondered how on earth he could desire me, but at least my body was now at peace.  It was, as they say, better out than in.  Not that I admitted to Ben what I’d been doing in there.

‘I just couldn’t wait to scrub all that horrible blood away,’ I explained in response to his perplexed stare, before wobbling back into bed and falling asleep.

I awoke after three feeling miraculously serene, if a little weak.  My insides were still, and a hush had replaced the disorientating roaring in my head.

Ben (naked) was making tea in his Lilliputian kitchen.  He brought us a mug each and, bizarrely, a bag of Mini Cheddars, which, along with a cigarette, we shared in bed.  I could have done without the fag, but wolfed down the cheesy snacks as though they were canapés at Rollo’s.  I was famished, having gone without lunch and then so revoltingly relieved my stomach of its contents.

‘Sorry I fell asleep on you,’ I apologised, munching.

‘It doesn’t matter.  I nodded off myself too.  It was just so relaxing being with you.  That was wonderful, Zoe.’

‘Was it really?’

‘It was everything I’d hoped for – and more.’

‘Except for the blood,’ I cringed, ‘I’m sorry about your sheets.’

He wasn’t so quick to accept this second apology;  Ben was, as I’d sensed, the house-proud type.  In fact, I took secret exception to his response, which was: ‘At least it proved you really were a virgin, eh!’  This was said jokily enough, but I resented the insinuation that he hadn’t believed me.  His words could be very loaded at times.

‘Now that we’ve shared a bed together,’ Ben continued, simpering, ‘and you’ve proven your love for me, I feel that we’ve put a seal on our relationship.’  He was forever coming out with things like that: words that sounded terribly grand but, when you stopped to analyse them, didn’t actually mean anything.

But at the time I giggled and snuggled up to him in a way I imagined married women did.

‘Well, crack the Champagne open,’ I said inanely, ‘Zoe Nicola Taylor is officially a maiden no more!’

‘I think of you as a grown-up woman,’ Ben said in a kindly tone that implied nobody else did, ‘and even more so now.’ 

I hated it when he got all patronising and made a big deal out of our age difference.  I could at no time be permitted to forget that I was younger, ignorant and thus indebted to this big sexy man who was condescending to date me. 

‘I’d best get up now,’ I remarked, lazily, at four.

Ben made his spoilt-child face.  ‘Aw, so soon?’

‘I ought to really.  I’ve warned Mom I might not be home from my “shopping trip” by the time she gets back, but I don’t want to leave it too late.  I’ll never get a seat on that rush-hour b– ’ 

The ‘us’ bit was swallowed by another devouring kiss from Ben, who pressed me back down into the luxurious bed nest.  We ended up making love a second time, which I had neither expected nor wanted.  My stinging bits could have done with a few days’ respite, though at least that initial slicing sensation wouldn’t be repeated.

‘It gets better, my darling, honestly,’ Ben breathed into my ear.

I hoped he was right.

It was almost five when I finally peeled myself out of his bed and yanked my creased jeans on, stuffing the scrubbery miniskirt back into my bag.  At least I would be less self-conscious on the bus now.

 ‘I shall see you tomorrow then, sweetheart.  I’ve had a wonderful afternoon.  The best of my life!’

‘Yeah, mine too,’ I said, though I was none too sure it was true.  ‘Are you still OK coming round to mine?  I’m dying to show off my special skill to you!’

‘Are you now?’

I thumped him playfully.  ‘I mean cooking, you saucy devil!  I’ll do you a slap-up lunch – a nice spaghetti carbonara.  It’s an aphrodisiac, you know!’

Ben was slurping my neck while I was chuntering this rubbish, and I was none too sure he heard me.

‘We’re gunna be together forever,’ he said huskily as he snogged me in his dressing gown on the doorstep, ‘I’ve made a commitment to you for life.’

Tuesday morning saw me trawling Sedgley’s branch of Safeway with a basket of spaghetti, bacon, eggs and cheese.  I felt terribly grown-up and domesticated as I battled through the usual clientele of ski pant-wearing mothers with bawling toddlers and pensioners who maddeningly paused to gas mid-aisle, then handed my notes over at the Ten Items Or Less checkout and walked – yes, walked – home, humming to myself and swinging my carrier.

‘This must be what love does to you,’ I commented aloud to a bemused passing cat.

Ben was even more punctual than usual, so when I answered the door to him I was still in my oil-spattered apron.  I felt more relaxed with him today, though; more sure of him.  He was committed to me for life, he’d said so.  Our relationship was – how had he phrased it? – sealed by our lovemaking.  Well at least I was in no danger of sealing up now!  I had Done It – woo-hoo!

‘Hiya Ben, hope you’re hungry!’  I hugged him lovingly – but he fussily levered me off his body.

‘What do you think you look like in that bloody pinny?  Doing an Old Mother Riley impression, are you?’

I giggled at what I perceived to be a joke until I noticed the haughty flare of his handsome nostrils.

‘Take it off, Zoe, let’s go out for lunch,’ he said irritably, ‘I’ll take you to a pub or a little bistro.  If they have bistros in Sedgley, that is.’

What was going on?  Where was my adoring, hands-on Ben to whom I had yesterday given my virginity?  He hadn’t even kissed me yet.

‘I’m cooking for you – remember?’  No reaction.  ‘Spaghetti carbonara,’ I prompted.

‘I’m not terribly keen on Italian.  And cooking demeans you so much.  We’ll eat out.’

‘But I’ve started making it!’

‘Zoe, I said we’ll eat out, OK?’

‘Oh, all right.  I’ll just – er – turn the gas off then.’

Shaking with disappointment, I killed the heat beneath my lovely bacony, pasta mush and thought with sorrow of how it would congeal, unloved and uneaten, after all that bloody effort I’d gone to.  I dazedly untied the apron, fetched my coat and was halfway out the door when the phone rang.

‘Leave it,’ Ben snapped.

‘I’d better not, it might be my granny.  She’s been bit poorly lately.’  He huffed.  Ben wasn’t the type to spare sympathy for poorly grannies.

‘Hi Zo.’ 

Karl!

‘Oh hello.’  I struggled to keep my voice guarded and neutral.  Ben was watching like a hungry jaguar from the open front door and I knew I’d be quizzed over lunch about the caller’s identity and purpose of contacting me.

‘Enjoying your holidays?’

‘Yeah, yeah.  Are you?’

‘Great, yeah.  Listen, I was, erm – ’  Erm?  I’d never heard Karl sound so flustered.  He was normally a real ‘come out and say it’ type, but right now he was reminding me of Simon Floyd.  ‘I was wondering if you’d, erm, like to go out some time?  You know, for a drink?  Or something to eat.  Or – something.’

Ohhh!

I knew not whether to laugh, sob, scream or cheer at the insane irony of it all.  That boy didn’t half know how to pick his moments!

Where were you a year ago, I wanted to yell frustratedly, or two, or three, or four years ago for that matter, when I was free and painfully in love with you?  Well it’s too late for you now, Corbett!  I’m taken, and two-timing is a sin. 

Karl must be let down; punished for his previous indifference.  It served him right.  Everything was his fault anyway!  He drove me into Ben’s arms.  Well now Ben and I were going to be together – gulp – forever, and Karl must be made to see exactly what he had lost.

The ‘cruel to be kind’ approach was best.

‘There’s a bit of a problem with that, I’m afraid,’ I replied dutifully, ‘I’m already spoken for.’

It was the first time I had said that to anyone, and I told myself it felt nice.  I actually hated saying it.  It made it sound as though Ben owned me.  My choice of words was telling – they showed his influence was well and truly at work.  I was expected to make a commitment to him, which meant foregoing any particle of independence I possessed.  My heart told me that my childhood pal Karl was more worthy of my esteem than Ben – but duty tied me to Ben, to the exclusion of all others. 

And now Ben pounced.  ‘Already spoken for!  Who the hell is that you’re talking to?’

He stormed across the hallway and snatched the phone so roughly he virtually wrenched my fingers off – just in time to hear Karl, with unexpected dejection, say ‘Well, I suppose that doesn’t matter.  We could just meet as friends.  Couldn’t we?  Zo?’

‘No, you couldn’t just bloody well meet as friends with my girlfriend, you – you – what’s your name?  Karl?  Well who the hell do you think you are, Karl, asking my woman out?  Didn’t you know she was taken?  Well, you do now!  Wait until you grow up, you pathetic little schoolboy, then you can find yourself a woman of your own!’

He smashed the receiver down with such force I was amazed it didn’t shatter to bits, then turned those cauldron eyes upon me.  I swear they were glowing, demoniacally, like a special effect in a cheapo horror film about the devil.  The mole on his face reminded me hideously of Darren Fisher’s.

Ben didn’t even touch me, but I cowered as though from a punch; snivelling and trembling, arms bandaged around my body in protection.  His vitriol was vile enough down the phone; close to, it was terrifying.

‘You’re dumped, bitch!’ he spat before storming out with a house-shaking slam of the door.  The next sound I heard was the ferocious roar of his Cavalier.